Amazon comes immediately to mind as a potential buyer. Amazon is a relatively recent entry in the LEO constellation broadband race, which leaves it far behind SpaceX, and it is first and foremost an an infrastructure company. CEO Jeff Bezos has a lifelong interest in space and owns satellite-launch and ground-station service companies. He could also fund the purchase himself.

While Amazon is perhaps most likely to acquire the OneWeb's assets, there are others. China is home to three LEO broadband startups that are also late to the LEO broadband race and have a ready funding source. Facebook might also be interested if they are seriously considering satellite broadband, .

Twitter user @megaconstellati has suggested that a government -- the US, UK or France -- might take over OneWeb. With its new Space Force and interest in lEO constellations, the US could consider taking over OneWeb, but that would not seem likely to appeal to a relatively anti-government administration. The same goes for the UK.

Not that it's likely to happen, but one could argue that a global ISP should not be owned by a single nation or corporation -- it should be a global asset -- just as coronavirus and climate change are global liabilities. Those liabilities remind us that we live on a "pale blue dot.

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

It will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions of and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.

The Geely Holding Group (GHG) is a private Chinese conglomerate that is highly diversified, but best known as an auto manufacturer that envisions itself as a "global mobile technology group." GHG announced this week that it has begun construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility that will include modular satellite manufacturing, satellite testing, satellite R&D, and cloud computing centers.

They will be capable of producing a variety of different satellite models, but the immediate goal is to produce satellites for a constellation of LEO satellites capable of offering low-latency internet connectivity plus cloud and edge computing to support in-vehicle entertainment, navigation, over-the-air software updates and level 4 and later level 5 (full automation) autonomous vehicles. (For a summary of the definitions of SAE's six levels (0-5) of vehicle autonomy, click here and for a detailed definition click here). Note that in addition to car companies, GHG has interests in trucking, high-speed trains, and even passenger drones.

Reuters reported that GHG is investing $326 million in the project, aims to make 500 satellites a year by 2025, and will begin launching satellites this year. Geely, sold 2.18 million cars last year and will be adding satellite functionality to their cars as well as those of other GHC companies, including Volvo and Daimler.

The illustration on the GHG press release shows a CubeSat, so they are evidently not interested in competing with SpaceX and other would-be broadband ISPs, at least for now. (Three other Chinese companies are working on LEO broadband constellations). Regardless, they will compete with broadband LEO satellite providers for mobile vehicle applications and it will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions of and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.